!
Warning !
the following links lead to graphic pictures and description of ritual
practices.

A wave of ritual killings

A former rubber planter who worked in Grand Bassa County during the
Tubman and Tolbert years, told me that each year some workers would
mysteriously disappear from the plantation, notably in the month of
December. Co-workers, when asked for information, would just shrug their
shoulders saying 'He will never come back'. He also cited the arrest and
imprisonment of one of his overseers, who was jailed for a few
months because of his involvement in a ritual murder case. Upon return,
the man - when asked for the reason of his absence - told that he
had acted upon orders of the local medicine man.

The foregoing may
illustrate that ritual murders are likely to have
happened each and every year in Liberia.

Ritual murder cases 1975 - 1980: a selection

In the second half of the 1970s a wave of
ritual killings was reported in the local newspapers. One may wonder how
this openness in the Liberian press can be explained. Certainly, one
explanation – and a positive one – is the relative freedom of
expression and of the press that characterized these days of the Tolbert
Administration. True as this may be, the possibility cannot be ruled out
that reporting of the ritual killings was orchestrated, or at least
encouraged by the Tolbert Administration, for the owners of these
newspapers were virtually all part of the political establishment and
close to the ruling elite. However, one should also not forget that many
educated Liberians, both Americo-Liberian and tribal, abhorred the
criminal practices of a small part of the ruling elite that considered
itself above the law.

The selection of newspaper reports (below) show that ritual killings
happened in all regions of the country: in the Hinterland, on the coast,
even in the nation’s capital. The reports cover the discovery of the
bodies, sometimes the arrest of suspects, but rarely the trial of the
accused. The two exceptions to the latter are the trial of the murderers
of Moses Tweh (Maryland County) and of Princelett Hilton Tiah (Sinoe
County). It is likely that the cases referred to below are just the
top of the iceberg. The exact number of ritual murders will never be
known.

The original text at times included grammatical and typo errors. These
were left unchanged. The same applies for some political or
administrative (sub-)divisions which meanwhile have been changed.

* The Press Service of the Ministry of Information,
Cultural Affairs and Tourism (MICAT) was an important source of information, but
of course reflecting the government's views. Also The New Liberian was published
by the Ministry of Information.

* The Liberian Age, privately-owned, very much supportive of the
TWP which (partly?) financed the newspaper. Editor-in-Chief
in the late 1970s was
Stanton B. Peabody. Both the Liberian Age and the TWP were banned after the 1980 military
coup.

*
The Liberian Inaugural
(weekly) and
The Sunday People (weekly), both owned and
edited by
Daniel Draper, Jr.

* The Sunday Express (weekly) and the Bentol Times (weekly), owned by the same private
company.
John F. Scotland was Editor-in-Chief
of both newspapers. The Bentol Times was
banned in 1980 (NB President Tolbert resided in Bentol City).